'It was surreal that I even was hit'

At the time, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Christian Beck had more pressing things to worry about than the bullet hole in his leg.

Primarily, he was worried about the bullet. After ripping through him, the round tore into the dashboard of Beck’s helicopter, knocking out the primary navigation altimeter.

So Beck had to level out the medevac Black Hawk and try to figure out how far away it was from crashing into the ground. At night. While keeping his crew and wounded patient calm.

And Beck’s boot was filling up with blood.

“I didn’t want to just give up, because I didn’t want to crash and burn,” he said. “It was surreal that I even was hit, so I just continued to fly until my co-pilot could take over the controls.”

Beck, an eight-year soldier currently stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, earned a Bronze Star with “V” for his level-headed thinking and level flying that day.

The attack occurred during Beck’s second deployment to Iraq. Until then, he said, his crews had flown over insurgents and received some small-arms fire, but never anything that actually hit his helicopter.

After picking up a wounded Iraqi soldier from inside the Sunni Triangle, Beck’s Black Hawk and another medical helicopter headed back toward their Baghdad base. Within moments after it took off, tracer rounds came whizzing toward the aircraft, followed by more enemy bullets.

Army investigators later discovered that a single bullet was the only round to hit the helicopter, but it nearly killed not just the pilot but the four other troops on board. Beck said when he tried to bank the aircraft out of the line of fire, it struck the floor just right below his right leg.

“You could smell the sulfur and burning metal,” he said. “You could feel it hit the helicopter, and I obviously felt it hit me.”

Beck, a pilot since 2003, said he immediately told the crew he had been hit, but he needed to pull the helicopter out of its sharp bank before his co-pilot could take over. His right leg was worthless, but he managed to level out quickly and hand over the controls.

“I just started using the radio box to tell him I was OK,” he said. “I knew the extent of my injuries better than anyone else, but I had to keep a level of calm. Everybody was pretty concerned that I wasn’t going to make it.”

After about 15 minutes of reassurances from their pilot and 15 minutes of intense pain for Beck, the helicopter was safely back on the ground. Medics rushed to treat Beck’s wound and to tend to the other wounded patient: He suffered no long-term problems, while Beck needed eight surgeries to regain strength in his leg.

But he did, and he served a third tour in Iraq as a pilot after about a year of rehabilitation.

“My only real fear (during the attack) was that I wouldn’t be able to fly again,” he said.

“I knew the most important thing was to stay calm and maintain control of the aircraft. Otherwise, I could seal the fate of all of the lives on board."